We all should've gotten in tech
(Nepo babies stay out of discussion)
We really should've all gotten in tech. I'm a rising senior and hearing about software engineers fucking making over 200 grand working 40 hours a week sounds insane. Not just for FAANG like even regular firms.
Can't even forget the lifestyle differences. Or weather. Comparing SF winters to NYC winters, or even all year round. Also them working at home for a good amount of times. Coming into office in jeans and a t-shirt. All that for us to work our ass off and stress out and bald for a lot less comp. Fucking insane.
Don't even get me started on the amount of tech SF kids that have become their own multimillionaire boss with their startups, something you see in finance when you have kids and are balding and you still have to work your ass off.
Is this shit even worth it? Like genuinely. I understand it might've been in the 80s or whenever. Making 400k bonuses in your 20s. This is why I said nepo babies out of discussion, by the way, like if my dad was some NYC finance guy yeah I'd choose it so I can easily get a job and follow in footsteps. But for the rest of us?
I know finance will always be around and there will forever be money in it. I'm just like. Why? I see the way money lives in SF and tech and it laps finance by a fucking mile. In every category possible except the women. I'm not even in investment banking I'm a college kid that is a bit all over the place but just wanted to write out some thoughts.
Who is “we”? Who is “us”?
“You” are still in college
We refers to other college students like me who have spent their time time trying to recruit into finance instead of tech. Can't be that hard to pick it up
You don’t even understand sarcasm lil bro. Maybe you’re right. You should’ve gone into tech. No place in finance for socially inept people such as yourself. Reincarnate bro
I'll be real with you, for someone who has no programming experience it will be that hard to pick up. You gotta be honest with yourself about how smart you are. If you're the type of person who has easily coasted before with high grades and standardized test scores without much effort you'll probably be fine. Otherwise, it is a whole different type of thinking to get yourself to think algorithmically and be a good programmer and good engineer. I've seen countless people do the CS major in hopes of money (this is 10 years ago when it was hotter) and struggle hard to grasp concepts and eventually give up and switch majors 2 or more years into the program. Out of those who made it, some were already smart and others trained themself to be and learn the concepts. More in the latter group, but the point is that it took them time and effort to learn it. You might be thinking FAANG employed a ton of swe's though? Yeah, there are a lot of people who studied it and were good at it, that is still only a fraction of how many tried and weren't. SWE, especially at better places, isn't just a job you can learn how to do or be briefly taught how to do and pick up and be an employee for. It's a specialized career. If you are in the higher thinking camp of people though, like certain very smart math/physics/mech eng majors, they actually can pick it up easily. Some of them might even only have touched coding as a hobby or side thing for their actual area of study but they're able to handle swe because their brain already thinks a certain way and is wired that way.
tl;dr real tech isn't for everyone
yeah for real, kids nowadays are hilarious lol. talk about counting your eggs before they hatch...how about u get a job to begin with before splitting hairs lol
woe is me. Don’t come? Go re recruit bubby boy
damn bub. How high is your cortisol? You sound super mad
Go into tech then. lol
all talk no do
SF is for nerds bro
The FAANG firms churn engineers at an insane rate. You can pretty much coast to VP in IB fairly easily, FAANGs are much more likely to fire people in year 1. Generally, tech is far more meritocratic compared to IB or even PE (hard to judge investment acumen given long term nature of investments).
My friend was laid off from Amazon after one year as a new grad in the last round.
Going to word vomit here, so apologies for bad grammar etc. Had a convo with some friends in cs the other day and would like to share some downsides. This is biased towards banking since u already are familiar with the issues in this industry.
To start off, I think this is an uninformed and idealistic take. I go to a school that places a ton into FAANG and know many friends in schools with huge CS target pipelines.
“Normal” tech companies aren’t paying 200k right out of college, they’re cream of the crop. Comparing cream of the crop tech to all of IB doesn’t make sense, but even if you do, the pay comes out to roughly the same.
The true divergence within tech is if you go on the quant side or a few of the AI behemoths, which arguably is less tech and more math (and 0.5% of super targets even get in, with some leeway for exceptional ppl). Also, taking a bet and winning on a startup is an option, but pointless to consider in the equation (it’s like saying finance is better because you can become Warren buffet or the guy from big short). Otherwise, most of the top tech candidates stay at the terminal senior level of big companies cashing in respectable money, coming out to 300-500k at top places.
Finance gives a clearer and faster pathway to surpass this if you can stomach moving up. At least within IB and PE, you’ll make absurd pay at senior levels whether it’s at a top or mid fund. However, the terminal levels (not quite at the MD/partner but VP/director) will make more than tech’s terminal levels. Even if not in IB/PE, there’s tons of optionality within LO/HF to make great money, though HF are admittedly more risky but likely better probability-weighted against startups for making great money.
Additionally, tech is very ageist, you will get pushed out if you don’t reach a certain rank in time. If you get laid off at a terminal level, it’s going to be hard to get a position at a same or comparable level if you’ve coasted there the whole time. In finance it’s the opposite where age is respected and seen as a positive due to relationship building.
With all this said if you’re on the boat of “I want good wlb and decent money” then you’re still misinformed abt tech. Most top companies pull 60 hrs a week, some exceptions of course, but it’s not a 9-5 and cash in 200k type of deal. Some, like Amazon, do more than 60, and startups do a lot more.
Even if you’re still telling urself tech is better, the opportunities are just so limited nowadays. The people, even in top schools, who get these coveted 200k right out of ugrad jobs live and breathe programming. Most don’t end up in them, so using that as a benchmark is a bit absurd (for example: CMU median was $140k TC for all of its CS dept last yr). AI disrupted every field, but it’s just so much more pronounced in tech.
Do what you enjoy. The more you learn about these industries, the more you’ll come to realize that these comparisons are somewhat pointless.
Amazon doing more than 60 is absolutely inaccurate.. what are you talking about??
It might be group/location dependent, but my boy in Seattle pulls that many hours.
Not inaccurate at all, everyone I know there does around 60 and one guy does more, he's on call often
This is cope tbh if you are good you will be paid 200k+ if you aren’t well god help you
Agree. SE is really cooked with AI. It’s already fundamentally changed the role and will continue to do so.
If you have a little tan go into DEI department and coast and coast.
"Do what you enjoy. The more you learn about these industries, the more you’ll come to realize that these comparisons are somewhat pointless."
To emphasize the "do what you enjoy" part, the older you get the more you'll see people crushing it in industries/doing work you'd be surprised one could get paid that much doing. Those who truly enjoy what they do and consistently apply themselves tend to gravitate towards the top of that field.
"Do what you enjoy" is one of those mantras I handwaved away when I was younger that truly made more sense with age.
SWE is a terrible career in 2026, it's not 2010 anymore. SWE teams are already shrinking and will continue doing so as AI gets better. Supply of CS grads keep increasing as well. Not ideal headwinds to any degree unless you are at an LLM.
Correct. The right play is to build your own stuff with these AI agents.
Bubble + you have to work with a bunch of bugmen Asian nerds.
Tl; dr
Yeah I’m in tech banking.
lol if there was one thing AI was born to do it’s slave away lines of code in the language it was written in
it might seem okay now but there is very little job security in SWE in the next few years - especially if you’re fresh out of college
finance, similar to law is a social science where human interpretation of the numbers / data matter just as much as the numbers themselves - this always gets glossed over and is why I’m not nearly as worried as my SWE pals over the next few years
Correction SWE is going to be very important and actually get a boost, coding is dead.
The job market in tech seems pretty good for good talent right now from top schools
Large talent variance during the zirp era
If you're smart and autistic, there's still no better path in my mind. I don't envy them though, the amount of shit you have to learn is insane. It would take you years and years of nonstop studying from scratch to even come close to the knowledge that some of these kids have about an extremely wide range of different topics
Ex amazon on the alexa team.
Depending on your team you either get completely shafted by the lack of instructions on your intern project working in my case 8 - 2 am or your team lets u work sub 20 hours.
This year they made it harder to receive return offers and converting to FT bc of all the churn.
Meta pins u up against ur class. One boss 10 interns and each week they place you against each other and they can only bat for 1-2 of them.
Its a good pay if you think about it from the short term and specifically only from top firms because its not enjoyable. You see so many move to startups because they can actually code. It changed recently, but before as you would assume most swes are actuallt just nerds so many came from a passion in making games and coding in general and are burnt out because thats not what the work actually is.
You spend so much time writing documentation, designing, and then running it through your team before a single line of code touches the actual product. Then imagine you’re doing this for some boring product like an internal tool for HR then your love for coding just dies.
Maybe I’m biased coming from a target cs school but the actual good coders have an inherent love for it and not so much for the conversational aspect of it.
That is definitely a "big corporation" problem, not a coding problem. I work at a fund, code all day, and the politics/bureaucracy is much less terrible.
Most likely the case, but I’m hearing consistent reviews across the main places associated with tech with my definition associated with FAANG. Its unfortunate that big tech lost its luster or most teams just suck.
I’m happy you found a nice place though.
Interesting grass is always greener take. My dad is very high up at a big tech company and he thinks it’s not what it used to be and did not recommend me and my siblings go into tech. He cites people getting kicked out of the industry earlier in their career.
Sometimes in my mind, I’m like why did I do real estate when my banking / PE friends are making more despite similar hours. But overall I think CRE is interesting and think I have a better long run trajectory.
You are very worried about balding. I suggest you take minoxadil or something
remember that the profession you choose will also shape your character/interests/personality, etc. so if you go to tech, most likely you'll become a fucking dork
I mean these professions are so different that WLB and comp should be one of the last things you consider. It’s like comparing becoming a dentist to working on Wall Street.
I too for a period of time in high school was considering majoring in CS over finance/econ. I spent about 2 weeks trying to learn how to code and that was enough for me to determine that this isn’t something I’d ever want to do as a career.
I’d gravitate towards what you like, what you are good at, and what your personality is better suited for. There’s plenty of money to be made in both fields but if you aren’t good at what you do and at least somewhat enjoy what you do, it’s going to be a lot harder to get to the top ~5-10% in either profession.
Man I work as a trader and am hitting 7 figs second year in a row. Late 20s and work as much as I want (have my own book).
But I also know some dudes from my year that joined the right tech companies and their stocks have 10x’d. Another guy joined a startup that is now a known billion+ dollar company and his equity will probably be worth 10m+ when they IPO.
Everyone has their path man. Stop worrying about averages and diverge
What do you trade?
How do I get to where you are?
- laid off SWE (former mechanical engineer, left o&g for tech 2021). At the time it was great but now oof
what are those jobs for 1?
corp dev, corp strat, corp fin
No, I don’t think it’s that black and white. I’ve lived in SF since 2005, so I’ve seen “Florence during the Renaissance” happen in Silicon Valley, and despite that I stayed in Finance.
I don’t think you should A) be all Finance, B) be all Tech; instead, you should be C) have a deep understanding of a particular industry you are obsessed about and either have “skill set leverage” (be a rare, unique contributor on the team that your partners will pay you an outsized amount for you) in either finance or tech, whatever you do best at. The most important part is finding an industry that you are obsessed with; that fulfills needs on Maslows Hierarchy of Needs; that is growing and mashing up with other industries; and you staying focused. Stop thinking about Finance (or Real Estate) as an industry, and start thinking of it more as a skill set.
I like to tell people: Money touches Everything. If money is everywhere, then it is nowhere. Finance is not an industry except for some limited, highly regulated segments.
Might blow your mind, but same thing, Tech is not really an industry. It is the umbrella term for companies doing things differently in various industries.
The better question is, should I have gone into _____ industry (I’m obsessed with, high growth, dynamic, and I am valued) and built up my career there.
That answer is almost always YES.
My role is somewhere between tech and finance. So I like to opine on these types of things.
Right now it seems like there is a massive gap between AI and non AI people. Non AI people are de prioritized and laid off, and nobody is gonna commit resources to boring but useful projects. AI people are having a great moment in their careers but have to deal with the insane expectations and short time frames that people are giving this technology.
do what you enjoy doing
The people in tech that you ought to envy are not the standard SWEs making $200K a year... it would be the people at OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. $200k a year is the floor for engineers and not really impressive at all even for a fresh grad.
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